She was supposed to be my salvation, and though she wouldn’t be my ruin, the loss was going to thrust my life right back to what started my downward spiral in the first place.

Organization takes the fun out of everything.

O Lord God! What plans do you have for me this year?

I think it's a very healthy thing to learn from what's happened in the past. But only if you look at what happened and think, 'How could I have dealt with that differently?' Then let it go.

Nothing I've worked on has been asked this much of me to put it on the page [like Paper Girls].

The only place the mind will ever find peace is inside the silence of the heart. That's where you need to go

People were always hungry, bullied, afraid, paranoid - so I just thought I'd show that in the novel in a kind of suffocating way.

I fully appreciate the fact that George W. Bush won 49% of my district.

I like to say I'm more conservative than Goldwater. He just wanted to turn the clock back to when there was no income tax.

There is nothing more frightening than the faces of people whom one does not know but who seem to know one, and be amused by one.

They grew fat and happy--the horses, not the children, or Marlena for that matter.

Things will get better - despite our efforts to improve them.